Chris Smaje delivers a stinging critique of the climate movement's most seductive promise: that technology will save us without changing how we live. While mainstream discourse obsesses over carbon capture and solar panels, Smaje argues we are ignoring the economic and social realities that make a true transition nearly impossible, leaving us with a dangerous faith in 'techno-salvation' that is already failing.
The Trap of 'Pay Later' Economics
Smaje begins by dissecting a recent book by Andreas Malm and Wim Carton, Overshoot: How the World Surrendered to Climate Breakdown. The authors argue that the current strategy of allowing global temperatures to temporarily exceed safety limits, with the promise of fixing it later, is a fantasy. Smaje finds their analysis of this 'pay later' approach convincing, describing the international climate negotiation process as 'a bit like a moribund medieval court obsessed with the minutiae of its obscure rituals and decorum, while the world outside the castle walls disintegrates.' This vivid imagery effectively captures the disconnect between bureaucratic procedure and physical reality.
However, Smaje identifies a critical flaw in Malm and Carton's logic. While they correctly note that stranded fossil assets could tank the economy, they then pivot to a surprisingly optimistic view of renewable energy. Smaje argues that the authors gloss over the hard economic truths, claiming 'energy from the sun and the wind is free, and so can't be turned into a profit stream.' This is where the argument begins to unravel. Smaje points out that while sunlight is free, the infrastructure to capture it is not, and the market dynamics that favor fossil fuels are far more complex than simple profit motives.
The 'let's pay later' approach is a staple of contemporary economic thought that's spectacularly inappropriate for dealing with climate change.
Critics might argue that Smaje is being too harsh on Malm and Carton's optimism, suggesting that rapid technological adoption is historically common. Yet, Smaje's insistence on the specific economic barriers—such as the cost of grids, minerals, and the difficulty of hedging renewable prices—provides a necessary counterweight to the prevailing narrative of a smooth, inevitable transition.
The Politics of Pigeonholing
The core of Smaje's critique shifts to the political taxonomy used by Malm and Carton. The authors categorize political views into four buckets: ecomodernism, Marxism, reactionary conservatism, and 'anarcho-primitivism.' Smaje, who identifies with neither the Marxist left nor the ecomodernist right, finds himself uncomfortably lumped into the 'anarcho-primitivist' category. He notes that Malm and Carton define this group as those who believe a transition to renewables is ethically bad or who desire 'generalised puritanism/privation or 7 billion people 'or so' removed from the planet.'
Smaje rejects this caricature entirely. He clarifies his own stance, drawing from 'civic republicanism, agrarian populism and distributism,' arguing that the goal is not privation but a rethinking of what it means to live within limits. He suggests that Malm and Carton use the 'anarcho-primitivist' label as a 'dismissive catchall category for any position that doesn't embrace a high-energy status quo.' This political maneuvering, Smaje argues, blinds the authors to the necessity of a lower-energy, more rural future.
Instead 'anarcho-primitivism' basically serves Malm and Carton as a dismissive catchall category for any position that doesn't embrace a high-energy status quo, justified by neo-Malthusian arguments about mass death in the absence of techno-fixes.
The irony here is palpable. Smaje points out that Malm and Carton, who claim to be critical of capitalist economics, fail to distinguish between the free availability of sunlight and the cost of electricity. This oversight leads them to miss a fundamental truth: 'the future will most likely be more rural and agrarian, and why we will not be using electricity to split water to feed bacteria to make protein but instead will be using sunlight to feed plants to make protein.'
The Undershoot of Political Imagination
Ultimately, Smaje's title, 'Overshoot, meet undershoot,' encapsulates his central thesis. We have overshot the limits of the planet, but we are severely undershooting the level of political and social rethinking required to address it. He argues that the political tools proposed by Malm and Carton—'a bit of Marxism and common sense'—are inadequate for the scale of the crisis. The reliance on twentieth-century revolutionary thinkers ignores the unique challenges of a world where energy growth is no longer the default.
Smaje suggests that the resistance to a lower-energy future is deeply cultural, rooted in a 'professional managerial class' that views practical, agrarian work with horror. 'A lot of people have a peculiar horror for the idea of a lower energy and more local world, necessarily involving more people working the land,' he writes. This cultural blind spot prevents a realistic conversation about the future of work and life.
The land will not be unfolding its leaves like a sunflower. It may, however, be producing sunflowers. And if it is, this will involve human work. That is, agrarian work. Local work. Practical work.
Critics might note that Smaje's vision of a return to agrarian life could be seen as romanticizing poverty or ignoring the benefits of modern conveniences. However, his argument is not about returning to the past, but about adapting to physical limits in a way that prioritizes human labor and local resilience over abstract technological fixes.
Bottom Line
Smaje's most compelling contribution is his dismantling of the 'techno-salvation' narrative, exposing the economic and political realities that make a smooth transition to renewables unlikely. His biggest vulnerability lies in the practicality of his agrarian vision, which may struggle to gain traction in a culture deeply invested in urban, high-energy lifestyles. Readers should watch for how this tension between technological optimism and physical limits plays out in future climate policy debates.